Thorny Devils

Breakfast in the camp kitchen

First stop today was the Desert Park, this large site situated under the West MacDonald Ranges has just about every native animal, bird, and reptile that could and does exist in the arid outback of Australia. 

We arrived in time to see a presentation and information session about dingoes, then went on to see the spectacular birds of flight presentation. Here the birds are trained to come in and fly over our heads and collect food in flybys.  It is quite specular. The only downside is it wasn't long enough.

One bird that I thought would never be trained is the Australian Magpie, he came in, swooped the crowd and warbled on command. Quite impressive.

We continued around the desert park and saw many amazing reptiles, night creatures, and birds. It did get warm walking around but there are drink fountains quite often.

After this concentrated taste of the desert, we went for a walk into Simpsons Gap. There was a water hole here and we were able to spot some of the bird species that we were introduced to in the previous park.

By now it had got a little warm, a ride in the air-conditioned car was in order.  We headed north of Alice Springs to The Tropic of Capricorn.  Photos were taken and as there is nothing else here, we headed back to the Telegraph Station. Oh, one interesting thing I saw was this dish and apparently, if you put your phone in the cradle the dish will help you get a phone signal. Normally I would get out to test this out but with the hot sun and more flies than I can count I decided to assume it works and grab a photo.

The telegraph station was one of those must see places, well the entire city was named after the ill-conceived notion that there was actually a spring!

Basically, the rivers here run upside down, the water under the sandy surface and the pioneers thought that a depression that never runs out of water to be a spring. However, it was only part of the underlying river.

We walked around doing a self-guided tour.  There are tour options but we thought it would be a little strange having a tour from a 25-year-old Canadian backpacker on his gap year.

The evening was spent on a tour to Kangaroo Sanctuary where we met Brolga, the man who cares for joeys that have lost their mothers, normally to car accidents.

He has been made famous, more internationally by a BBC documentary and with this most of those on the tour were from overseas.  This caused the tour to be skewed a little for them and the Australianisms were a little emphasized more than normal. 

The tour was great, however, where else do you get to see someone who dedicates their life to an animal that is a pest to some but also on the country's coat of arms. 

Also as a bonus, we got to hold a joey his name was Howard.